It is challenging to sum up what biosemiotics is all about for two reasons: Firstly, because it is an incredibly diverse field, and secondly, because it does not yet have a unified terminology. There are ongoing attempts to develop such a unitary approach, and several programmatic drafts are in circulation. As to the first, the diversity of biosemiotics is perhaps inevitable (regardless of whether or not a unified terminology will one day emerge), given that any topic matter in the realm of the living – approached as a phenomenon at any level of biological organization – can be a topic of biosemiotics. Biosemiotics is a semiotic approach to matters of the living and the life processes.
The umbrella term ‘semiotics of nature’ is sometimes used as a common denominator of more specialized fields including biosemiotics (semiotic biology), ecosemiotics (semiotic ecology) and zoosemiotics (semiotic zoology). Of these, zoosemiotics was initially first and foremost a study of animal communication. In the narrow sense, to sum up, ‘biosemiotics’ is opposed to zoosemiotics and ecosemiotics – but in a more general sense it is often taken as synonymous with ‘semiotics of nature’.
Central notions of biosemiotics, apart from obvious terms such as ‘meaning’, ‘sign’ and ‘communication’, include ‘code’ and ‘interpretation’, as well as ‘system’ (living systems approached as sign systems) and ‘model’. Thomas Sebeok (1920-2001), one of the seminal figures of biosemiotics, developed a notion of the Umwelt (lifeworld) of animals/humans as a species-specific modeling system (to the effect that each animal species models their surroundings in a unique way that is characteristic for its species). The Umwelt concept was originally developed by Jakob von Uexküll (1864-1944), another of biosemiotics’ seminal figures. Perhaps the best simplified dictum of biosemiotics, in my mind, is that we should study the living by studying what makes sense to them (and in them). Meaning generation is at the core here, whether it is in perception and social life or in bodily semiosis. In the case of studies of animal (or human) Umwelten, biosemiotics favors re-modeling in abstract, scientific language of animals’ own modeling of their relevant surroundings in terms of their actual perceptual and behavioral worlds. Biosemiotics, in this sense, is the re-modeling of the real-life modeling taking place in animal nature and nature in general.
While ‘semiosis’ in general is the action of signs, ‘biosemiosis’ is the action of signs in the biological realm. The ‘threshold of semiosis’ as well as the ‘threshold of biosemiosis’ is under continuous debate, though Sebeok held that the realm of semiosis is co-extensive with the realm of the living. The uncanny term ‘anthroposemiosis’ has been coined to designate the human share of (bio)semiosis; but some distinguish biosemiosis from cultural semiosis. It is generally agreed, however, that it makes sense to talk about a human Umwelt (i.e., to talk about the human lifeworld in terms of Umwelt theory), though there is no detailed agreement as to what distinguishes human life. Except perhaps on one view: That human language is deeply different from animal communication in that it is unusually symbol-laden and opens up the lifeworlds of people in some sense, thus allowing us, somewhat, to share experiences. Simultanously, biosemioticians take for granted that human language and animal communication can to some extent be described in the same scientific language.
In the world of semiotics, many biosemioticians position themselves as followers of Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914), while others have yet other icons and sources of inspiration. Few, however, regard the work of Saussure as a promising model. The general opinion is that Saussure unjustifiably presented human language as the typical model of semiosis/sign systems. While many biosemioticians have an interest in human language, human cognitive development etc., human language is in general viewed as a very complex, perhaps the most complex, instance of a sign system. Nevertheless some biosemioticians use linguistic metaphors in speaking about 'syntax' and 'semantics' (and 'pragmatics') in nature; some also theorize about nature as 'text'.
Given the variety of biosemiotic approaches, what I have written here does not do justice to much of what goes under the name of biosemiotics. My own approach is focused on the level of the individual, and the social/ecological level – but there are other biosemioticians who focus almost exclusively on what I here brashly mention as bodily semiosis. In short, human language can be approached from a biosemiotic (in the narrow sense), ecosemiotic and zoosemiotic perspective, thus situating human language in either a narrowly biological, ecological, or zoological setting. These various approaches reflect biosemioticians’ interest in partly related fields, including cybernetics, hermeneutics, and philosophical anthropology, to mention but a few. Accordingly, human language can be approached as a secondary modeling system (given that the Umwelt is the primary modeling system) - i.e., as a 'upper' or additional layer of our specifically human lifeworld - as a linguistic coding system, etc.
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